How to Better Control Artist Listings When there is More than One Performer?

I would like to be better able to control Artist listings when there is more than one performer on a song. Sometimes I would like both performers to appear equally, such as Bing Crosby singing with Louis Armstrong, and thus the song might appear under both of their names (in separate folders). Other times, there is a primary artist with a secondary artist that should be stated as a performer on that song, but there should not be a separate named folder as one would never look up a song by that artist alone. I could give other examples, but you get the idea.

I have been experimenting. I notice that MM acts differently if the artist's names are separated by a "and (or &)", a semicolon ";" or a comma ",", , but I can't find any reference in the HELP files as to what's going on.

Can someone direct be to an identifying table of operands, and/or otherwise explain what's going on when using different operands to separate artist names when more than one is performing on a single song track.

; is a multiple value separator. Thus Artist 1; Artist 2 will mean it is associated with both Artists. You can set this under Tools > Options > Appearance.

Generally you list each Artist performing the track as a separate value (using and list the Artist which with the Album is associated as Album Artist (something like Various Artists when dealing with compilation Albums).

In the Media Tree you can choose to use Artist, Album Artist and/or Artist & Album Artist as node depending on your preferences. You configure this under File > Manage Collections (Gold Feature).

Yes, I notice that when separating two artists in the Artist fields with a semicolon (;) then the song is listed in the Artist tree twice: one folder under each of the artist's names. So, if the Artist is designated "Bing Crosby; Louis Armstrong" that song will be listed in the Artist tree twice, once under each name. In other words, the two artists are TREATED EQUALLY.

But what if I want to name both artists but show an artist folder for only one of the two people (perhaps because the second artist is of minor importance). For example, where Bing Crosby is the primary artist but Sam Smith also appears, I would like to list Sam Smith as the other artist, BUT I DO NOT WANT A SEPARATE TREE FOLDER DEDICATD TO HIM.

Is there another operand (other than the semicolon (;), of course that will accomplish this? For example, what is the effect of using a comma (,) between the two artist names. How about when one uses "and", such as "Bing Crosby and Sam Smith" under the Artist cell?

The multi-value separator can be changed at Options > Appearance, but it only affects the display of the separator in the library.

If you don't want a different Artist tree node in your example case, probably better to just list the main artist in the "Artist" field, and list any other accompanying artists in the "Comments" or "Involved people" fields.

Another option would be to list only the main artist as the "Album artist", list both artists in the "Artist" field separated by a semi-colon, and then edit the media tree to only display "Album artist" rather than "Artist" or "Artist & Album artist".

For Album Artist I use the album artist, usually one person or band name - unless in the case of some albums where there are two or more Album Artists. For them I list them both in the Album Artist filed separated by semi colon.

For Artists field I list everyone who was involved in performing on the track. This will include the album artist (usually), but not the band name (which instead is broken out and I list each name of the person in the band)

Mediamonkey is just "too clever" in this regard, establishing semicolon as the default multiple artist separator, but secretly writing a forward slash to the ID3v2.3 tag.
So you think you've done a good job of maintaining your library with thousands of tracks, updating the Artist field with semicolon separators, just to discover that when other programs read this library, they are unable to separate multiple artists, or (if they do acknowledge forward slash) the band AC/DC is split into two bands.

What is the ultimate solution to this?
I find it very upsetting that MM writes something else to the tag than it display on screen. Not even warning about this. How was I to know that 8 years of maintenance work is wasted? If I only knew what to use, I could probably find a program capable of bulk search-replace.
But I have to stop using MM because if I replace the forward slash in the ID3v2.3 with semicolon, then MM will change it back again during the next update/write without telling me about it.

I, too have noticed this secret behavior MM has of writing slashes between Artist and Album Artist field values in mp3 tags. I find it annoying that when I run "Sync Tags with the Library, " that's not what I get. The same is not true of Genre field, which can also have multiple values. Is there some reason I should consider this bizarre behavior appropriate? desirable?

Select all your files and run this action on them. It runs fast and will revert all the slashes to semicolons. (I don't use any forward slashes in my values, that I can recall.) But any time MM updates the tags, they're back.

The use of "/" to separate multiple entries in a field is, in fact, in the ID3v2.4 specifications and not a Media Monkey quirk. If your other programs are misreading this it is because they are not following the specs.

Slight correction to what yarguy had to say. It is indeed in the specifications for ID3v2, but it's on the 2.3 rules. I don't think non-people frames where specified for multiple values in 2.3. ID3v2.4 changes how these frames are handled and instead specifies a null value to separate multiple values in a frame... and I believe that's for all multiple value fields, not just specified for people frames. However, it's been a few years since I read through the ID3 specifications.

I think the biggest confusion is that MM writes people and non-people frames differently. However again, the ID3 specs had people frames clearly defined while technically, I don't think "genre" is a mutli-field in the 2.3 specs.

yarguy wrote:The use of "/" to separate multiple entries in a field is, in fact, in the ID3v2.4 specifications and not a Media Monkey quirk. If your other programs are misreading this it is because they are not following the specs.

If you had paid a bit more attention to what this thread is all about, you could have spared us for such comments. Nobody is complaining that MM is writing forward slash to the tag. It's the fact that this is displayed in the program as semicolon. It is this discrepancy issue that is debated here and not whether one or the other is right or wrong. It seems you failed to understand that?

Yeah, it would be great if you could just type [artist:;], no brackets, into simple search. Unfortunately, that doesn't work.
I'm sure you could use one of the "replace string" presets in RegExpress Find & Replace for that. Ask questions about it
in the addons forum.